D.W. Tale Spins
Mad Mix Machine 1998 VHS # Mad Mix Machine # The Library Kid # 2018 December 12 # Professor Fritz # No Acting, Please D.W. starts this story, in her room, and she's dressed up like Arthur, and wearing his glasses. She's doing an Arthur impersonation. from 1998 VHS D.W.: Hi, I'm Arthur, Duh! Arthur comes into D.W.'s room, and he's annoyed since D.W.'s got his glasses, and Arthur's been looking for them. Arthur manages to get them off D.W. and calls out to Mom that he's found them. D.W. doesn't want to stop imitating Arthur though. D.W.: I'm Arthur, and some tiny little thing happened so I'm calling for Mom... *** D.W.'s out in the garden with Mom and Baby Kate. D.W. has one of those rings that's like a frisbee. She tosses it towards Baby Kate, and instead of throwing it back, Baby Kate starts chewing on the ring. D.W.'s bored... and feeling lonely. Arthur and Buster appear, walking towards Arthur's... they're discussing the new "Vegemorphs" series of books, which feature people who can morph into vegetables, like carrots and potatoes. (This isn't as dumb as it sounds -- see explanation... Dave) Arthur says that the Vegemorph books are great, and that they make the "Scare-Your-Pants-Off" books look like "kids' stuff". Buster says he really liked "The General". Arthur liked "The Specific" and "The Random" since "it was so unpredictable!" Buster also enjoyed the trilogy: *"Part One" *"Part One, Part Two" *"Part One, Part Three" D.W. wants to hang out with Arthur and Buster, but Arthur's against it, since D.W.'s too little. He says she can't read books like they can, and to further his discussion, he shows her his difficult homework, and says she can't do that either. (1989 divided by 13) Since she's so little, and incapable, she can't hang out with them. D.W. looks at the covers of the Vegemorph books, featuring a person morphing into a carrot, and says that she can make up better stories than those. Arthur and D.W. get into a "Can not" / "Can too" argument... Buster: Well, I'm outta here -- This shows no sign of ending soon... Next, we see D.W. sitting with Grandma Thora at Grandma's house. They're sitting on the couch, and D.W.'s explaining her problem. She thinks Arthur's right, since since she can't read or write, she can't tell good stories. D.W.: Brothers are so mean. Grandma Thora says that she knows what having brothers is like, and points to a photograph showing her when she was little with her THREE brothers. But D.W.'s wrong when it comes to storytelling. Grandma Thora starts: Grandma Thora: A long time ago, stories weren't written down...D.W.: Like television? Grandma Thora: No... these stories excited the imagination and stirred the senses... We get to see a family of cave-aardvarks from prehistoric times. One of them is telling a scary story, the climax appearing to be the sounds "Glar Glar Glee"... Grandma explains that stories weren't written down, they were told orally, and if someone liked a story they'd heard, they'd remember it, and tell it to others, and stories would be passed on this way. Armed with this knowledge, D.W. goes up to the clubhouse, where Arthur and Buster are sitting with a pile of the books. Arthur tries to shoo her away, but she tells them that not all stories have to come from books. Arthur doesn't agree, but Buster's willing to listen to her. D.W.'s going to tell a story, and then Buster and Arthur can decide whether or not she's right. Arthur says she should tell the story of how he got Pal. D.W. (offhand, dismissing Arthur) Nobody cares. D.W. begins to tell her story, which is about a famous queen's adventures. (At this point, we go to D.W.'s imagination, while D.W. narrates the story -- everything is drawn in a blocky simplified way with less colours, and thicker black outlines than normal. Note: all the hyphenated names like Cyclops-Buster are mine, D.W. doesn't say them... it's just to make it easier to understand without seeing pictures of it. Also, sorry about not identifying which Tibble twin says what; I took notes while watching this one on a black and white TV...) Queen O-D.W.-us was a brave queen, who was sailing home with her crew...*Nadine, *the Tibbles, *Emily (of earring and gym class fame) *and a couple of others from her preschool) Then Poseidon, the God of the Sea, (a giant robed Francine, with a beard) found out that the clever queen was stealing her unicorn. Queen D.W. tried to play dumb at first, "How'd that get there?", as the giant Francine lifts a tarpaulin off the unicorn, which was standing on the deck of the ship, and then argued: Queen D.W.: It's not fair, I'm a queen and everything... Francine-Poseidon was angry, and made a big wave to try and sink Queen O-D.W.-us's ship, but Queen D.W. managed to ride the ship on top of the wave. D.W.: (leaning on the tiller of the ship) We're doin' it. Poseidon's wave can't hurt us... An island of jagged rocks appears in front of the ship. D.W.: ...but big rocks can! The ship breaks up, and everyone's tossed out. However, everyone on the ship survives, and they get washed up on an island. They're shipwrecked! D.W. gets up, and starts banging her hand on the side of her head. One of the Tibbles says We survived, but our Queen is nutty...D.W. comments that she hates it when she gets water in her ears... she hits her head again, and a crab pops out of her ear and scutters away. One of the Tibbles: There's a good joke here about our queen being crabby --D.W. stares at them with one of her usual expressions... Tibble: But I'm not sayin' it! D.W. and the Tibbles set off to find some food on the island. They found some weird white flowers. The queen didn't eat any of the flowers, but the others did, and the weird flowers gave everyone: Narrator D.W.: amn-amnee- it made them forget everything. Everyone started to forget who they were, what they were doing, and where they were planning on going. (Everyone besides D.W. has a vacant look on their faces and tiny pupils... they even construct a TV set out of reeds and sit in front of it doing nothing.) Queen D.W. then found out that this was no ordinary island, it was Cyclops Island! (the Cyclops is portrayed as a one-eyed, one-eared Buster wearing sandles and a robe.) The Cyclops picked up everyone and took them to his cave, where he rolled a boulder over the entrance. Cyclops-Buster planned to have them for dinner. Inside the cave, the still entranced crew and the D.W. are prisoners. The Cyclops eats a rock, then a tree, and then Cyclops-Buster picks up the two Tibble twins between two fingers and swallows them! Then we get to see inside the Cyclops' stomach. An intact Tommy and Timmy are in the stomach, with pieces of the tree and a rock. One of the entranced Tibbles: Is this were we were going? Other: Must be. First Tibble: I'm taking a nap -- Travel always makes me sleepy. Meanwhile, the Cyclops has gone to sleep. Queen D.W. comes up with a plan. She climbs up the side of the cave and onto the Cyclops' head, where she ties the Cyclops' large ear around his head like a blindfold. She gets down, and then tells her crew to get ready for her signal. She then shouts at the Cyclops. Cyclops-Buster awakes to find he can't see. Cyclops-Buster: Ahh! An eclipse! Queen D.W. shouts to the Cyclops telling him that everyone's escaping by crawling out around the rock. The Cyclops says that he'll get them, and rolls the rock blocking the entrance away. At this point, everyone runs out of the cave. D.W. manages to get her crew (minus the Tibbles) into the Cyclops's giant rowboat, which was just the right size for them to use as a ship. They managed to row away, leaving the Cyclops, still blindfolded on the shore. He threw rocks at them, but since he couldn't see, they managed to get away. Narrator D.W.: The Cyclops was too dumb to untie his ear... Cyclops-Buster: Hey, I'm bad with knots. That's why I don't wear sneakers! (lifts up a foot to show off his sandle.) Queen D.W. then had a brilliant idea, and tied a Cyclops sock that was left in the boat to one of the giant oars. They now had a sail. Then she told all the crew that the weird flowers they'd eaten had hypnotized them, "...and they said, oh yeah, and remembered." But they weren't home yet. They then had to sail past the Sirens, which are beautiful women who try to lure people to their island with their singing, so that they'll crash their ships. Queen D.W.'s crew made sure that wouldn't happen by wearing earplugs and tying their captain to the mast until they were past the island. (The Siren's beautiful song is, of course, a rendition of "Crazy Bus") Next they had to get past Scylla (Silla) & Charybdis (Car-Rib-Dis) which were respectively a giant six-headed monster, and a whirlpool. ... ---- Arthur interrupts here to wonder why D.W. could manage those words when she couldn't remember "whirlpool"... D.W.: Quiet, it's my story. ---- (Scylla is a giant Muffy in a bathing suit, with six heads on long necks. Charybdis is a set of small whirlpools which resemble Arthur's face.)To get past these obstacles, they had to sail carefully between them, and avoid a lot of jagged rocks as well. As they do, Scylla-Muffy's six heads shouts furiously : "Don't you even think about coming unto my property!" Queen D.W. has a clever idea, and unties the Cyclops sock that they were using as a sail. It flys off and hits Scylla-Muffy in one of her faces. "How rude!" Scylla shouts. While she's busy with that, Queen D.W. gets her crew to row the ship past both Scylla-Muffy and a wicked Charbybdis-Arthur to safety. Then D.W. says that they were clear of all the obstacles, and were nearly home. D.W.: Except the ship got hit by a thunderbolt.This happens and the ship turns black and crumbles away. Everyone was drowned, except for Queen D.W. Queen D.W., grasping a piece of the shipwreck (with the letters: T,I,T, and part of an A painted on it :) (Titanic reference anyone? -- Dave) washes up on shore. She's finally home. D.W. wraps up the story: "She was home, and the first thing she did was tell everyone her story, which is a good way to tell a story, by telling it, like I'm doing now." ---- D.W. looks at Arthur and Buster. D.W.'s quite pleased with herself. Arthur scoffs and dismisses the story, since it wasn't like a Vegemorphs book: "...no potato powers or anything." "Ha," says D.W., "That just proves you don't know what a good story is." D.W. explains that the story she just told them was told to her by Grandma Thora, and is thousands of years old. D.W. just changed a few bits in order to test Buster and Arthur -- now when Arthur tells her anything, she doesn't have to believe it, since he might be wrong about that since he was wrong about her story being no good. Arthur's forced to admit that maybe the story was good. Buster however, loved D.W.'s story, and wants her to retell him the bit about the Cyclops. Then Arthur says that he wants to hear about Charybdis again. As the story fades out, we hear D.W. start to retell it again. Where to start? Ok -- to help Arthur out, 1989 divided by 13 is 153. I liked this story, probably my favorite of season 4. The interesting drawings helped a little. :) Also, I'm a fan of anything with D.W. in it... D.W. dismissing Arthur's dog story is a good point. Arthur does keep bringing it up. But D.W. keeps bringing up the snowball incident too... It's odd that Arthur's rejected the "Scare-Your-Pants-Off" series so quickly, since he only just went to Muffy's "Scare-Your-Pants-Off" party a couple just a couple of shows ago... The Vegemorph books was a parody of the popular "Animorph" books (now also a television show), which feature kids that can change into animals. I guess it wouldn't make sense for anthropomorphic animal people to change into humans, would it? :) The book covers of the Animorph paperbacks look just like the fictious Vegemorph covers that we see a couple of times. The apparent comment that storytelling is better than either series books or television shows is ironic coming from a television show based on a series of books :) Like 99% of the episodes, when Arthur takes off his glasses, he has dot eyes like Prunella... I could expand on the classic version of the Odyessy vs. D.W.'s version... that'll have to wait for now though. Go out and see if you can find a copy of it in your library. Category:Episodes Category:Warner, Home Video, 1998, VHS